Big topics - what can I do with the time I have left?

When I started this journal, I explicitly tried to stay away from big, philosophical topics because a) I wanted to chronicle my activities during my time out of and in work and b) it was much more important that wrote about what I did, not what I thought.

Well, as it has turned, one of the big topics is having a direct impact on my daily activities. Quite often, I have bad days - hours when I'm exhausted, unable to focus, or, worse, unable to care. On such days, I will often catch a second wind in mid-late afternoon, around 3:30 or 4:00. I then have to decide what I will work on for the rest of the day.

A bunch of years ago, I was watching a Red Sox game on TV. The announcer mentioned that open tryouts were scheduled for the following Saturday. "All players," the announcer said, "must be between the ages of 16 and 25 years old and must bring their own gloves, shoes and uniform." I was going to be 26 in a few months. I was saddened because a totally unrealistic fantasy, that of being a professional baseball player, was beyond my reach. Truth be told, that idea entered the realm of fantasy when I was 11 or so and unable to see the inside fastball.

How, then, do we judge our days? Some times, our judgments have good, empirical evidence - Did I hit the inside fastball or not? Other times, they're relative - How well did I do today compared with yesterday or days last week? How well did I do relative to my abilities for that particular day?

For the last six-plus months, I've assigned each day a number on a 1-7 scale, with 1 being great and 7 being somewhere around a bag of wet donuts. I'd been assessing the days for even longer, but didn't start recording the numbers until April. I found that I needed to average below a 3 to do my job. There have been two brief periods, in mid-July and late last month, where I've averaged better than a 3 for a week. (A sample of the chart is available here, in PDF.)

On days with a rating around a 3, I think that I ought to be doing ok, even to the point of being able to handle tasks that are something like the kind of things that I had done at work. So, today's been a 3, I think, and what have I done? I babysat Cassie for a couple of hours, did a couple of errands in town, and a few other miscellaneous chores. It's a 3 because I felt/feel pretty good, but I don't have a lot to show for it. Oh, I also talked with our neighbor who'd been in the hospital for a couple of days as the result of a severe arthritis flare-up. Yeah, that's the stuff that will generate a fresh grant of stock options.

See? This is the kind of thinking that drove Martin Luther bonkers. Anything that he could do, he should do, and why wasn't he doing more? This is a good reason to stay away from big topics and concentrate on the next right thing to do. In the meantime, maybe my granddaughter will remember that she and I had fun playing in the back yard on a nice autumn day.